Thomas Sowell provides this nonsensical warning:
Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.
Don’t conservatives realize that such statements might fire up the base, but make virtually everyone else question both their fitness to govern and their sanity?
For the last time Obama is not a Muslim and even if he was it doesn’t make him a Threat to America! I swear these idiots make Jim Crow supporters in the 60s look good!
That’s not what this one is claiming. His idea is that Obama will lead to us being conquered by Muslims.
The time frame is, at least, off. It will take them a good long while to swallow Europe. And, of course, there is the hope that Muslims, following other immigrant groups, will, as their income rises, both secularize and reduce their birthrate.
I don’t know Sowell, but I think his comments open some interesting, valid questions. He seems to be drawing a “what if” senario. What if, somehow radicals with nukes got in position to hit our country with them? Now if they did it with hidden terrorist cells or the ability to launch from a distance (Thank God for Reagan and SDI) the question I get from Sowell, be it his intent or not, is how far would we bend to their demands? He makes a note about Japan, fanatical and proud as they were, caving in after a couple of hits. What if after one, or perhaps two nuke detonations on U.S. soil, the terrorists mearly for starters, demanded the shut down of the U.S. porn industry? Would we not suddenly be convinced to rethink the case of the People v.s. Larry Flint? Is our society that strong willed that we could stomach nuke hits rather than conceed a little of freedom of speach? Assuming, and this is just assuming we did conceed, could perhaps over time, we would also “see” the social advantages of mandatory burkas for our school girls? I mean, only to reduce stoking the flames of pedaphiles, it would be amazing what kind of rational people could come up with to justify going along with the demands of terrorists. I wonder how isolationist minded the founding fathers would have remained in a world of nuclear proliferation? Oops, perhaps I should have put this under the article of crazy libertarian talk. With all this nonsense about sacrificing thousands of lives for Hustler magaizine.
The major problem with Sowell’s post is to claim the risk would be greater under Obama. The risk of terrorists getting nuckear weapons has only limited relationship to whoever is president and I wouldn’t use this as an issue to attack either party. If we were to drag partisan politics into this, the Democrats have a far better track record in understanding the issue than the Republicans, making his post especially absurd.
You are definately right that the founding fathers would see things different now than in their era. While it is still meaningful to cite them on basic principles, we cannot take thier views as absolute guidelines for current policy as many conservatives do. Of course they pick and choose the views, going for limited government involvement in the economy while supporting greater military action, greater power for the executive branch when Republicans are in office, and ignoring the views of the founding fathers on separation of church and state.
I meant to point out what I think is a significant error of Sowell also. He said the national debt has quadrupled since Obama, perhaps he intended to say the annual deficit, but an error none the less. The emphasis of the article seems to be trying to paint Obama as a “turn and run” president. An I agree with you that the democrats as a party are far too hawkish for that to hold any weight. (Oh, so hard to keep a straight face when writing that.)
It’s not a question of being hawkish. It is a matter of understanding the problem and responding in a rational manner.
Actually in some ways the Democrats were more hawkish. It was the Democrats before 9/11 who were more hawkish in terms of taking action against terrorism while the Republicans opposed this.
Republicans win the overall battle for being more hawkish under Bush. The problem is that they were hawkish in ways which were counterproductive.
After walking away to start my “Honey do” list I ran back to recant a little. I wish we as a blog, if not as a nation, would have a serious discussion on how best to fight terrorism, I don’t think characturizing democrats one way or another, as I did, is very fruitful. But before solving the middle east situation and threats of nuclear terror, I’ve got to go pay pay some bills.
Mike, IMO the first thing we have to do is be strict in our definition of terrorism. For instance, I have repeatedly seen the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon cited as a terrorist attack. It was not. It was an unconventional military attack on a military target. If we don’t restrict our definitions, then anyone who fights back when we hit them is a terrorist.
Fritz, I’ll have to ponder that one awhile, very interesting. As completely evil as some people are in what they do, sometimes I also think it is a misnomer to describe a suicide attack is a “cowardly act.” Possibly cowardly by the ones who sent them but not by the ones who did the action.
Psychopaths would be a better definition for those who carry out that act.
What? The attack on the Marine barracks? Our armed forces were engaged in military activities in Lebanon on one side of a civil war (we were using off-shore battleship artillery from the Iowa IIRC to destroy neighborhoods). One of the partisan groups, using this bomb, killed over 200 enemy soldiers (ours) at the loss of one soldier. That does not sound crazy to me.
Now the firebombing of Dresden during WW II — that was the act of a psychopath.
I was prefering to suicide bombing in general. And wasn’t it the allied forces that bombed Dresden? a city in Nazi Germany of all places? I’m not sure where you’re going with that one.
Mr. Jefferson — the bombing of Dresden (both the target and they types of bombs to use) was planned to maximize the number of civilian casualties. A city with little industry was chosen because it had not been bombed often before (and thus had lots of flammable material in place). A massive overkill of incendiary bombs was chosen as the munition in order to create a firestorm that would remove all of the oxygen from the air and suffocate the populace within their bomb shelters.
That is an act of terrorism.
There are many military missions that do not have a realistic expectation of survival. Soldiers who volunteer for such missions are typically called “heroes”.
I fail to see how someone who’s so willing to murder as many people as possible that he doesn’t even have regard for his own life can be considered “a hero” in your eyes. To me there’s only one word to describe such an individual and that’s a psychopath I don’t care what the cause is.
Back on Topic I can’t help but cringe at the GOP’s desperate rhetoric. Do they seriously think we’re stupid enought to believe there’s a threat of muslims taking over the United States? I have a better chance at making love to Kate Winslet than that ever happening.
Why do you call it “murder” to kill enemy soldiers in a war?
America seems very far-fetched. Various European countries? Not so far-fetched. As I said, the key question is whether sectarian/religious commitment and birth rate both go down quickly.
If you really want to learn about 4GW then visit
Defense and the National Interest.
William Lind is a social conservative and you can debate is politics.
His discussions about warfare are right on.
http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/
The sidebars contain links to various discussions about 4GW.
I would call Dresden a terrorist act as there was no other reason then to force the civilian population to give up the war. There was no military reason.
How about the fire bombing Japanese cities in WWII? The idea was to kill enough civilians to force the public and military to give up. Military action or terrorism?
“The major problem with Sowell’s post is to claim the risk would be greater under Obama. The risk of terrorists getting nuckear weapons has only limited relationship to whoever is president and I wouldn’t use this as an issue to attack either party.”
That’s exactly right — even if terrorists got their hands on a tactical nuke or they were able to build a crude nuclear weapon, it would not be more powerful then the ones used in WWII. Probably less powerful. While that’s everyone’s worse nightmare, it would not be the end of the United States — even it it were Washington D.C., there would be enough infrastructure, industry, civil and political culture to keep the country intact.
The real danger is accidental nuclear war — that would involve thermonuclear weapons (100’s of times bigger than anything teorrists could steal or built), there are 10 to 20 thousand of them, 1000’s currently on hair-trigger alert. Once those start going off, for any reason, the world will fall, and it would be the end.
Obama will soon be going to Moscow to talk about further reductions in nuclear weapons and preventing, as far as possible, any accidents that could trigger a global exchange.
One of the best things the U.S. can do to reduce the likelihood of terrorism is stop meddling in the middle east in those cases where U.S. National Security is NOT at stake. On this issue, Obama gets the high marks:
U.S. soldiers in Iraq have started pulling back from cities to nearby bases and turning over security to Iraqi police and soldiers. U.S. combat missions in Iraq are scheduled to end by August 2010, and all troops must withdraw by 2012. Cato scholar Christopher A. Preble comments, “The withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities is just the first step in a long process of finally bringing the ruinous Iraq war to a close. It’s what Americans want. It’s what Iraqis want. Most importantly, it’s the right thing to do.”
Studies show that human beings are notorious for mis-estimating risks, e.g., we’re more scare of flying than driving.
It’s interesting how the traditional left and right express this irrationality in their own ways: on the left, it’s global warming that signals the end of the world; on the right, it’s Iran’s and/or North Korea’s likely acquisition of nuclear weapons that means the end of us all.
Matthew Yglesias, about a year ago, had an unpleasant wake up call of what could easily, and with little effort, cleanly sweep away all history and civilization, in about an hour:
“One paradox of these kind of events is that normally the panels you’re most interested in attending mostly feature experts telling you things you already know — these, after all, are the issues you’re interested in.
But at a panel on nuclear proliferation, Bruce Blair from the World Security Institute told me that far more nuclear weapons than I’d realized — about 2,500 — are still on hair-trigger status in the United States and Russia. That means these weapons could be launched within minutes with no advance preparation on the part of the White House or the Kremlin.
It’s a remote possibility, of course, that those weapons would be launched on accident or in some fit of madness from Bush or Medvedev. But considering the extent of the downside risk, and the lack of big-time US-Russian tensions this seems crazy. Surely we could dial this back such that in case a crisis developed we could consider shifting the weapons onto this kind of status.”
Mathew’s surprise stems from a simple lack of knowledge. However, there can be outright denial about how serious the threat is: two years ago, the Bush administration made the claim that U.S. strategic nuclear forces were not on hair-trigger alert — that brought a stunned reaction:
“The Bush administration has come under fire for stating before a United Nations conference that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is not on “hair-trigger alert” — an assertion that arms-control experts criticized as “inaccurate” and “misleading.”
Her comments sparked rapid criticism. “It’s plain wrong,” said Hans Kristensen, director of nuclear information at the Federation of American Scientists. “There are forces on alert, and whether they are on ‘hair-trigger alert’ or ‘launch on warning,’ they are capable of launching in minutes.”
Bruce Blair, a nuclear weapons expert and president of the World Security Institute, said the United States and Russia keep about one-third of their strategic arsenals on launch-ready alert and that “hundreds of missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads can be launched within a very few minutes.”
“There has been long history of denying U.S. forces are on ‘hair-trigger alert’ . . .” Blair said. “Some of that is based on lack of knowledge, and some of it is an evasion, and some of it is just an outright lie.”
Nuclear terrorism and global warming are potentially serious problems, but . . . the end of the known world? Hardly.
Note that nuclear terrorism, however, could trigger a global nuclear war, so it’s actually a more serious immediate problem than global warming for that reason alone.
Ah, I just found a talk given by Bruce Blur: “Aren’t hair-trigger nuclear missiles a target for terrorists?” Reprinted in the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
It’s an interesting read, and it really takes the focus and worry off of rogue states acquiring nuclear weapons and put them where they belong: thousands of missiles, 3000 to 5000 total megaton yield, ready to launch within minutes.